Chances are you remember Rosie the Robot maid from the Jetsons. She called George Jetson “Mr. J.”
Anyway, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley have taken a significant step toward bringing Rosie to life: They’ve created a robot can fold towels. Before I write a word more, here’s a video:
Ok, so Rosie cooked, cleaned and did the laundry, among other tasks. This robot can’t even wash clothes. It only folds towels. But this is still a remarkable engineering achievement.
The Singularity Hub blog is understandably excited. Here’s why:
The robot successfully completed 50 out of 50 attempts to fold a single towel and also folded 5 out of 5 towels when they were presented in a group. Is watching a robot do laundry really that exciting? Hell yes. We have a personal robot actually performing personal and useful tasks. It’s not dancing. It’s not welcoming you to an expo. It’s doing real work.
That’s amazing. But you know what, forget all that, too! You know why this is really great? UC Berkeley used a Willow Garage robot to develop their own sophisticated robotics program. That validates the whole premise of the PR2 – faster development by letting researchers use a common platform. Score one for open source robotics!
This past weekend I just bought my wife a new washer and drier. Now it looks like I’ll have to spring for a robot to fold the clothes. Or maybe not. I fold.